Marseille Irrigations Proposal

Expanding Euroméditerranée masterplan for local residents

An Integrated Solution discusses an attitude toward designing for Marseille today. The importance of creating balance between the Global Portal [explored through City of Movement] and the Intimate Metropolis [explored through City of Pause] is understood and a framework is set up which tackles the social and political connections between Marseille and Fos, the city’s industrial counterpart.

The City of Travel concludes the second movement. Balancing Intervals opens the third movement and flows the thesis to meet the physical. A joint master plan is revealed that acts as a balancing system for the key concepts: Global Portal and Intimate Metropolis; City of Movement and City of Pause through a evitalised railway that connects with the national transport grid and addresses six intimate stations along the route that integrate the master plan with the surrounding environment.

The master plan is then explored further through individual station design of Gare du Méjean and Gare de Marseille : Passage du Piéton, translated as ‘Station of Marseille : Terminus of the Pedestrian'.

“…Outskirts are the state of emergency of a city, the terrain on which incessantly rages the great decisive battle between town and country. It is nowhere more bitter than between Marseille and the Provincial landscape.”BENJAMIN

The merge of port of Marseille and Fos, the city’s industrial counterpart was natural and perhaps necessary. As an increasing amount of trade has migrated to Fos, the city has been left with a incrasingly is proportionate post-industrial scar to the trade left, a remnant of what once gave the city balance.

The Euroméditerranée Project, one of the largest redevelopment projects in the world is Marseille’s solution to the ever increasingly frozen landscape and disconnection with the city’s status as a port city. However, although this project offers Marseille with a global and national agenda, the sprawling and dominant nature of large-scale redevelopment threatens the city with a monocultural society, dry from the lack of imaginative planning.

“In many ways, the “value” of this landscape, though barren, could be said to exceed that of the new centre.”STATUS 8

Balanced Intervals acknowledges the forgotten landscape of the post-industrial port, and in particular the current trade rail lines that are currently not included in the Euromediterranee Project as being thick with redevelopment opportunities. It is clear that Marseille has always thrived when in balance with the Global Portal and the Intimate Metropolis. In this respect, the potential of the port should be researched and reinvented to embody the essence of Marseille.